The day I realized I would never be a secret agent

Secret agents in fiction fascinate me. From James Bond to Jason Bourne to John Le Carré, I've always loved stories about espionage and intrigue.

You always get a glimpse of the characters in their early days, how they were selected and recruited. It always seems like the CIA or a similar institution goes up to them. (In Canada, I suppose it'd be CSIS.) No one ever seems to seek them out. In a way that is never presented as being creepy, they'll find you. They're the surveillance gods.

I guess that's great for some people, but what about for the rest of us? What about the ones who have weird, embarrassing moments, and would die of shame if they thought they were being spied on by spooks in nondescript vans packed with high-tech whiz-bangery?

Case in point: The day I realized I would never be chosen as a secret agent.

Example #1

#ASOIAF Re-Read: A Game of Thrones, Part 28

Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to this little re-read where some of us while away the time between now and the eventual publication of A Dance with Dragons, a.k.a. one of the most anticipated books of the last few years.

We're up to Part 28 right now, and all of this began at Part 1, or at the Intro if you prefer.

In recent news, I JUST discovered that Blogger has a handy feature that pulls up all the comments for you, without having to search through every post for them. Handy! I found it by accidentally clicking on "Comments" in my dashboard. I believe "attention to detail" is on my résumé...

Back to the re-read: There are spoilers. Perhaps not so much in the posts, but the comments are basically a free-for-all, and I wouldn't really have it any other way.

So follow along via RSS, or Twitter, or Google Reader, or whatever it is that you use to track blogs of either amazing awesomeness or relentless mediocrity. I keep my fingers crossed that this hodge-podge of a fiefdom lies at least somewhere in-between the two.

The Wall and the Dothraki Sea await.

While I was MIA...

Dear Readers,

Let me begin by apologizing for my month-long absence from the blog. From the online world, for the most part. Before, I was posting as close to regularly as I could manage, usually about one of my favourite book series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Then... nothing. What happened? Well, I went to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. It was a fun experience and whatnot, and then after a few days I was back. And that's when trouble started.

No, the trouble started before then, but it didn't really start affecting me until then. I can't go into the details because some of it deals with my work, and a lot of it deals with my personal life, but I can say that it was a difficult few weeks. There was no time for most of the things I'd been doing before, and not much heart either. I'm sorry.

I'm back now. All is well, or well enough for the time being. The most recent post for A Game of Thrones is up, and I've got a couple of one-off posts on the way for the more casual reader. I'll also find any comments left during the last month and answer them as soon as possible.

Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for reading.

#ASOIAF Re-Read: A Game of Thrones, Part 27

Welcome back to the ASOIAF Re-read, for it is indeed back. Those of you who are not first-timers here might wonder where I've been. I wrote about it in a separate post so as not to take away from this. Suffice to say that I'm happy to be back, and I hope you're happy to read my ASOIAF-related ramblings. I hope you were well in the month since I last posted.

Where were we anyway? Oh, right: we'd finished Part 26, meaning we're now up to Chapters 58 and 59 (!!!). I hope you'll forgive any rust on my part, and hope we can get right back to the ensuing chaos in the Seven Kingdoms. (There's a lot of hoping going on here.)

Before we continue, please note that there are some spoilers in the post and in the comments regarding all four ASOIAF books. First-timers can start the re-read here or here, and you can follow using the RSS tab, or Google Friends, or Twitter.

There are kingdoms and lives to save. Let's roll.